Tag: photos

I spent this weekend with good friends, eating good food, reading, drinking a few beers and sitting by the fire. It reminded me how important the lazy sunday is. Simply, taking a break from things, watching the specks of dust move around in the light.

About "Dryads"

I have to admit that "Dryads" is pretty much last months concept, revamped. There are a two reasons for this:

It is okay to milk a novel idea. Recycling is good.

I've been busy elsewhere and needed something light and relaxing.

Reason #1 explains itself.

Reason #2 deserves explanation; coming up with a concept is the hard part. Once that concept has been formulated, elaborated and actualized, it's just play from there. Happy 2006, and be nice to the trees this year!

Beware! Pixies were spotted flying around somewhere in Sweden! Pixies are nasty little green fairies that like to dance in the shadows of stones.

About "Pixies"

While green is among my favourite colors, I find the dark hue hard to work with. Forcing myself to do so anyway was the primary drive for "Pixies". This was a success in the sense that this is probably the first installment where all 5 parts of the whole are in the same hue—usually I drift on to other colours.

The photos are from Sweden, and while not online, there are a few other pictures in my photo gallery that are from the same place/period.

The light streaks were made by waving a flash light in front of a tripod mounted camera with prolonged exposure. These streaks are actually from early 2004 as well. I guess you could call this a left-over mashup. But hey, don't we all love that?

Noscope November is a celebration of the most beautiful of autumns I have experienced in years. The leaves are saturated more than ever before, and the sky has been gray in the most wonderful way.

October was a good month for me. While I was busy as ever with moving from Vesterbro to Amager, it's been a great experience, and I'm thrilled with my new locations. In fact, Image #1, my personal favourite of the 5, was taken not long from my new apartment.

But October did not only present me with a new apartment, it also presented me with a fantastic trip to Sweden with some of my close friends. We sat under the cold cold night sky, around the fire in the garden, packed in layers of sweaters we found in our house. We counted shooting stars, while drinking white russians. On the last day, we grilled dinner down by the barn, with extra coal due to the sub zero temperature. Those are moments to remember.

Naturally all those events saturated the leaves extra for me, and as such, this is a tribute to mother nature and all the fantastic events she can present to us. I hope you'll all have a great autumn.

Music

The beautiful musical track is called "Red Tide", and was initially composed for May 2003. You can download the full-length song from Kate, but consider purchasing her bands CD, "The Aqua Path" for 10 USD (+ shipping) at cdbaby.com.

In a few days, I will be moving away from the part of Copenhagen that is known as "Vesterbro". While I am looking forward to this, it also represents the end of an era. Thus, Noscope October is dedicated to the fond, and not so fond memories I have of life at Vesterbro.

About "Vesterbro"

While Vesterbro is in a constant state of change, it does represent "classic Copenhagen". It's got the pulsing energy of city life, a diverse sub culture, but also whores, hustlers and drug-addicts.

I have come home from work many times, only to ask a few people on my doorstep to please have their fixes elsewhere. I cannot count how many times I've gone to pickup my bike to the smell of someone who just marked his territory. I have seen many tragic cases, many struggles and many fights.

Those are the not so fond memories.

Yet, it is not without a sense of genuine sadness, that I move from Vesterbro to Amager, in a few days. It's hard to put a finger on what exactly it is I like about this place. The memories? Perhaps. The sounds? Unlikely. The smells? Not bloody likely.

In fact, it's pretty hard to explain why at all, one would miss my part of Vesterbro. So I have created these pictures, to try and tell the story.

I have focused on capturing the sense of a summer nearing its end. The kind of special melancholic feeling that allows for a precious, yet terribly sad memory.

Other images of Vesterbro

While I am unsure as to whether I succeeded graphically this month, I am satisfied that I was able to focus on the fond memories. This is quite unlike the time I moved, from Nykøbing Falster to Vesterbro in May 2002. My "4800 nykøbing" Installment was definitely focused on the negative memories, and was almost sarcastic in its expression.

Soon after my moving to Vesterbro, my interest in the big city was sparked. This resulted in "1701 cph v". Rough edgy pictures that pretty much represented my emotionally tumultuous state at that time. Yet the imagery from 1701 cph v was distinctly more positive than 4800 nykøbing.

March 2004 would again use imagery from Vesterbro, this time packaged in an almost comically sugar sweet packaging. The "Happyjoy Issue" would show warm pictures from around the Copenhagen lakes (which is near, and part of Vesterbro), but also an intentionally shrouded picture if Istedgade, the main street for prostitutes to hang out on.

I hope that by making these images, I can save not only the pictures, but also the emotions and memories of a place, in some form of time-capsule I can revisit when I grow old.

The Music

The beautiful musical track is called "Bones", and was composed for the 4800 nykøbing installment. It is composed by Kate, and can be downloaded on her project page. While not part of her band Melusine's The Aqua Path, that CD does contain more ambient music, and is definitely worthy of purchase. Make it yours for 10 USD (+ shipping) at cdbaby.com.

The beautiful musical track is called "Gelid", and is composed by Kate. Gelid can be found on the CD "The Aqua Path". The Aqua Path, containing 60 minutes of ambient water music can be purchased for 10 USD (+ shipping) at cdbaby.com.

"Sommarlov" is swedish, and roughly translates to "Spring break", or "Summer holiday". The choice of theme is a reflection on the current bulk of rain Denmark is being hammered with currently… and of course hopes that it'll stop in time for my going to Roskilde Festival 2004 from the 1st – 4th of July…

So, in hopes of good weather for everyone this summer, I've tried to capture the feel of summer.

I think it worked out, mainly with credit given to Kate's great musical piece.

The pictures from this month are from my two recent photo collections from sweden, "Vännaryd" & "Kullen". Added to the composition is a techno-trixy pixelly effect that I first stumbled into when designing Greenpeace Amazon Crime Files sometime last year. It involves filling areas with aliased pixel-patterns, to achieve a flickering effect on the edge of big screens. Unfortunately, this part of the images didn't work so well.

"Du gamla, du fria" is the first line of the swedish national anthem. While this May edition is indeed a tribute to the Sweden that I love, this choice of title is more decorative than nationalistic.

By decorative, I am speaking of the content of the images I made for this month. The idea, initially, was to make postcards from Sweden, old tarnished, slightly tacky postcards.

While only the text on image 1 and image 5 is tacky, I am pretty satisfied with the end result of this months pieces. I wanted to make sharp contrast, use much more white than I usually do, and create great textures that weren't just Photoshop's "texturizer". This, I think, I succeeded in.

With this said, I'm far from happy about image 2, 3 and 4. It's just something about the composition, the colors, and the texture that's just not spot on.

The text on image 1 says "Du gamla, du fria, du fjÃ¤llhÃ¶ga nord", which as mentioned is the first line of the Swedish national anthem. Very roughly translated, it means "you old, free, mountaneous north".

The text on image 5 says "Hälsningar från Sverige", which translate to "greetings from Sweden".

3 year aniversary

Noscope was launched as part of the May 1st reboot 2001. Today, May 1st 2004 I have been true to the legacy I more or less swore myself to. 5 images, every damn month. Some quick pocket calculation makes this 3 * 12 * 5 = 180 pictures / illustrations. Needless to say I'm proud beyond what words can describe, because one thing is sure: statistical probability says, atleast SOME of these 180 images has to be good.

As a celebration, I'll post my personal favourite images I've made over the past 3 years, not to forget the beautiful music Kate composed!